How to Wrap Fabric on a Frame

Hi there! It’s Lee here, back with another post on making a trendy pieced-fabric wall hanging! In my last post, we learned how to use tiny piecing to make a great little quilt top. Today, instead of quilting it, we’re going to finish the piece by wrapping it onto a canvas frame.

Pieced fabric wrapped on a frame has been all over Instagram lately—it’s a trendy modern take on the traditional mini-quilt! While I do love the texture quilting can give to a piece like this, wrapping it on a frame instead gives it a clean, minimalist, graphic feel that’s right at home in modern décor. Plus it’s an easy and quick way to finish something off. So give it a try on your next small project! Here’s a tutorial on how I do it.

Material to Wrap Fabric on Canvas

• A wooden frame stretched with canvas – I’m using a 14″ x 14″ square that I purchased on Amazon • Fabric glue • A stapler (I had no problems using a typical office stapler, but depending on the hardness of the wood used in your stretched canvas, you may need a heavy-duty stapler) • A mini-quilt top like this one

1. Lay the quilt top face down on a cutting mat. Lay the blank framed canvas face down and centered on top of the quilt top. (The cutting mat helps get it evenly centered.)

2. Run a THIN, LIGHT line of glue down each vertical side of the back edge of the canvas, and fold the quilt top over to glue down the side edges. (A little glue goes a long way! Don’t do huge globs of glue like I did in this photo! That’s too much! lol)

3. Treat the corners just like you’re wrapping a present! Carefully fold and glue them down.

4. When you’re done gluing, it should look like this. This is great, but when you’re working with a pieced fabric quilt top, you’re going to want it TIGHT, so that no wrinkles or seam puckers show. You can definitely see some in the photo above!

5. So that’s when I break out the stapler. I start by securing the corners …

6. Then I carefully and gently tug the edges inward a bit more and staple them tight. This is a gradual process. Each time you tighten an area and staple, turn it over and check the front of your work, to make sure you’re not distorting your piecing or introducing any wavy seam lines! After adjusting one side, you may need to adjust the other side equivalently. Just keep working and adding staples, alternating sides and edges, until the front fabric is nice and taut and wrinkle/pucker-free!

And it’s ready for hanging!

Pieced quilt tops aren’t the only things that look good stretched on canvas! I stretched this fabulous Alison Glass large-scale print onto a canvas several years ago, and it’s been hanging in my entryway ever since! There are so many fabric prints that look like works of art out there, why not use them that way?

I hope you enjoyed my piece on stretching a mini-quilt top onto a canvas!